How the Ocean Works: An Introduction to Oceanography

How the

Ocean Works

An Introduction to Oceanography

Mark Denny

Princeton University Press     Princeton and Oxford

Copyright © 2008 by Princeton University Press

Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW

All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Denny, Mark, 1951–

How the ocean works : an introduction to oceanography / Mark Denny.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-0-691-12646-3 (hardcover : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-691-12647-0

(pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Oceanography—Popular works. I. Title.

GC21.D398 2008

551.46—dc22                2007034543

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

This book has been composed in Sabon

Printed on acid-free paper. ∞

press.princeton.edu

Printed in the United States of America

1  3 5  7  9  10  8  6  4  2

For Susan Rose

Contents

List of Illustrations

List of Tables

Preface

Chapter 1: Discovering the Oceans

Chapter 2: Ocean Basins

Chapter 3: Seawater

Chapter 4: Photosynthesis and Primary Production

Chapter 5: The Flow of Energy, Carbon, and Nutrients

Chapter 6: The Dilemma of the Two-Layered Ocean

Chapter 7: The Coriolis Effect and Its Consequences

Chapter 8: Winds and Currents

Chapter 9: Solutions to the Dilemma

Chapter 10: Complexity: Carbon, Iron, and the Atmosphere

Chapter 11: Fisheries

Chapter 12: An Invitation

Index

Illustrations

1.1.    Earth from space

1.2.    The Bosporus Strait

1.3.    Islands of the Pacific

1.4.    The realm of the Vikings

1.5.    Eratosthenes’ scheme for calculating the size of the earth

1.6.    Cape Bojador and the Cape of Good Hope

1.7.    Zheng He's route from China to India and Africa

1.8.    The Isthmus of Panama

1.9.    The sailing route through the Strait of Magellan

1.10.  Edmund Halley's diving bell

1.11.  Formation of an atoll

1.12.  An engraving from the report of the Challenger expedition

1.13.  The bathyscaph Trieste

1.14.  A bathythermograph

1.15.  The fit of the continents around the Atlantic

2.1.    Three points fix the latitude-longitude coordinate system to the globe

2.2.    Definition of the tropics

2.3.    Measuring the angular separation between San Francisco and Athens

2.4.    Distribution of earth's land and oceans

2.5.    The ocean hemisphere

2.6.    The distribution of water on earth

2.7.    Common features of the ocean floor

2.8.    Earth's system of ocean ridges

2.9.    Convection currents in the mantle cause seafloor spreading

2.10.  The named zones of the ocean

2.A1. Calculating distances on a circle

2.A2. Calculating distances on the globe

3.1.    A water molecule

3.2.    Electron orbitals of an oxygen atom

3.3.    Hydrogen bonds

3.4.    The density of pure water as a function of temperature

3.5.    The SOFAR channel

3.6.    The density of water as a function of salinity

3.7.    The densities of seawater and freshwater as a function of temperature

4.1.    A typical coccolithophore

4.2.    Typical dinoflagellates

4.3.    Pennate and centric diatoms

4.4.    Measured sinking rates for phytoplankton of different sizes

4.5.    Sinking in still and turbulent water

4.6.    Photon energy as a function of wavelength

4.7.    The absorption spectrum for chlorophyll a

4.8.    An experiment to measure the rate of carbon fixation

4.9.    Photosynthesis-irradiance curves

4.10.  Light intensity as a function of depth

4.11.  The wavelength-specific attenuation of light by seawater

4.12.  Gross productivity as a function of depth

4.13.  Pathways of the oceanic nitrogen cycle

4.A1. Theoretical sinking rates for spheres and prolate ellipsoids

5.1.    Categories of marine heterotrophs

5.2.    A tintinnid ciliate

5.3.    A typical foraminiferan

5.4.    A typical radiolarian

5.5.    A typical copepod

5.6.    Krill

5.7.    A typical solitary thaliacean

5.8.    An aggregated thaliacean

5.9.    A typical larvacean

5.10.  A typical pteropod

5.11.  A typical jellyfish

5.12.  A typical ctenophore

5.13.  A typical chaetognath

5.14.  A lantern fish

5.15.  A typical squid

5.16.  Generation time as a function of body size

5.17.  The traditional trophic pyramid

5.18.  The trophic river

5.19.  A hypothetical example of the logistic curve of population growth

5.20.  Control of population size by prudent predators

5.21.  Comparative rates of population growth

5.22.  Paths of oceanic carbon and nutrient flow

5.A1. Chaotic fluctuations in population size

6.1.    Characteristics of the two-layered ocean

6.2.    The thermocline changes with the season

6.3.    The intensity of light impinging on a surface at various angles

6.4.    The intensity of light depends on latitude

6.5.    The tilt of earth's axis drives the seasons

6.6.    Heat influx and efflux vary with latitude

6.7.    The general pattern of thermohaline circulation

6.8.    Recycled production as a function of overall productivity

6.9.    Characteristics of the two-layered ocean, revisited

6.A1. An example of gravitational potential energy

6.A2. Calculating the potential energy of water in a cylindrical tank

6.A3. Calculating the energy required to depress the thermocline by mixing

7.1.    Objects attached to the earth move in circles

7.2.    A demonstration of centripetal and centrifugal forces

7.3.    The radius of circular motion depends on latitude

7.4.    An example of force components

7.5.    Another example of force components

7.6.    Gravity provides a centripetal force

7.7.    Centrifugal force reduces the weight of an object at the equator

7.8.    Centrifugal force compels water to move toward the equator

7.9.    The pressure exerted by the weight of air and water

7.10.  A gradient in pressure causes flow toward the poles

7.11.  Earth's centrifugal bulge

7.12.  An experimental equilibrium platform

7.13.  An explanation of the north-south Coriolis acceleration

7.14.  Eastward velocity as a function of latitude

7.15.  An explanation of the east-west Coriolis acceleration

7.16.  A second example of the east-west Coriolis acceleration

7.17.  Factors affecting the latitudinal variation in Coriolis acceleration

7.18.  Hypothetical development of geostrophic flow

7.19.  The pressure gradient in a hill of air

7.20.  Flow of air in a northern hemisphere hurricane

7.21.  Geostrophic wind flows parallel to lines of constant pressure

7.A1. Terms used in the calculation of the east-west Coriolis acceleration

7.A2. Velocity versus time for an object in constant acceleration

8.1.    Idealized Hadley cells

8.2.    A hypothetical three-cell system of winds on earth

8.3.    The Ferrel cells rotate as if driven by the Hadley cells

8.4.    The three-cell model of winds on earth

8.5.    Surface winds on earth

8.6.    The Indian Ocean lies mostly south of the equator

8.7.    Earth's major deserts lie near 30° North and South

8.8.    The Ekman spiral

8.9.    Winds and surface currents produce a bulge in the ocean

8.10.  Deflection of surface currents by continents and Coriolis acceleration

8.11.  An ocean gyre

8.12.  The wind-induced currents of the North Pacific

8.13.  Spatial variation of geostrophic flow in the North Pacific

8.14.  Major wind-induced currents of the ocean

8.15.  Ocean surface currents around Antarctica

8.16.  A bathtub experiment exploring the effects of wind stress

8.17.  The basinwide tilt of the thermocline in the Pacific

8.18.  The Walker cell of zonal winds

8.A1. An experiment to explain convective circulation

9.1.    The annual pattern of primary productivity in temperate seas

9.2.    The annual pattern of primary productivity in polar seas

9.3.    Coriolis acceleration causes the equatorial divergence

9.4.    A north-south cross section through the equatorial upwelling

9.5.    The equatorial upwelling in east-west cross section

9.6.    Upwelling in the California Current

9.7.    Surface currents in the Southern Ocean

9.8.    The Antarctic divergence

9.9.    Thermohaline circulation, revisited

9.10.  The global pattern of new production

9.11.  Mechanics of El Niño

9.12.  A map view of El Niño flow

10.1.  The greenhouse effect

10.2.  The history of carbon dioxide concentration in earth's atmosphere

10.3.  Negative feedback

11.1.  The logistic curve of population growth

11.2.  Population growth rate as a function of population size

11.3.  The history of the Canadian cod fishery from 1960 to 2005

11.4.  A hypothetical survivorship curve for marine fish

11.5.  The size distribution of a fish population

11.6.  The Universal Fisheries Curve

11.7.  Representative examples of California fisheries

11.8.  The sequential crash of California's sardine and anchovy fisheries

12.1.  Tidal effects on day length

Tables

2.1.      Conversion factors for length

2.A1.   Values used to calculate the great circle distance from London to Rio

3.1.      Common components of sea salt

4.1.      Major players among the phytoplankton

4.2.      The oxidation-reduction states of some elements common in the ocean

5.1.      Marine functional trophic groups

10.A1. Measured equilibrium constants for carbon dioxide in seawater

Preface

Ihave the privilege of an office that looks out on the Pacific Ocean. From my window I can watch fishing boats at work and sea otters asleep in the kelp. Gray whales, humpbacks, and once even a blue whale, have wandered by. The sounds and smells that waft in through my door are a constant reminder of the sea, a habitat that forms 71% of our planet's surface area and 99% of its livable volume. With its magnificent presence at my doorstep, writing an introductory oceanography text might seem a natural idea, but it took a trip to landlocked Falls Church, Virginia, to kick me into gear.

This book was conceived on the back porch of my friends’ house one summer night in 2004. I was in town for a meeting, and John, Michelle, and I were reviewing the events of the day when the discussion turned to oceanography. A news report had appeared a few days before suggesting that melting ice in the Arctic—a result of global warming—might lead to a drastic reduction of temperatures in northern Europe. John wanted to know, How is that possible? How can global warming produce colder winters in England?

Good question. And even better, it was a question to which I knew the answer. Not one to turn down a teaching opportunity, I launched into a description of thermohaline circulation, a physical process in part responsible for controlling Europe's temperature. Thermohaline circulation might be drastically curtailed by melting sea ice. But before I could explain that, I had to back up and explain how seawater freezes in the first place, a strange story in which all the salt is squeezed out and the ice is fresh. Halfway into that explication I had to digress to explain why seawater is salty and where the salt comes from. The questions and answers entwined, the scope of the discussion expanded to include marine biology as well as marine physics, and we had a grand time learning how the ocean works. We didn't finish, of course, and as we were adjourning to our beds, John asked the fateful question: Where can I read up on this stuff?

I had no answer. The obvious place to start would be an introductory marine biology or oceanography text, but I was hesitant to suggest that solution. First, it was clear from the evening's conversation that any understanding of the ocean as a whole requires information about both marine biology and oceanography, but the two fields are seldom effectively combined in textbooks. Introductory texts on marine biology tend to gloss over the physics and chemistry essential to oceanography, and introductory oceanography texts tend to downplay the biology.

Second, the current crop of introductory marine biology and oceanography texts adheres to a disturbing publishing trend in which authors compete to see who can pack the largest number of glitzy photos, color-coded diagrams, and new vocabulary words into the least number of pages. Reading one of these texts is analogous to watching a cable news show. While you are trying to pay attention to the sound bite offered up by the commentator, your attention is diverted by the box scores crawling across the bottom of the screen and the ads for the next great reality show blinking in the upper right corner. As fact-filled and colorful as these texts are, I could not in good conscience recommend them as an effective means to begin learning about the sea.

Instead, what John needed was a book that presented a coherent story about how the ocean works. It need not be a complete story—to hew to the story line, some facts would have to be left out—but it would need to provide a solid basis on which someone could build. It would need to teach one how to think about the ocean, leaving the details for dessert.

Over the next few days, I searched for a book that met those requirements and came up empty. In growing frustration as I wandered through libraries and bookstores, I kept remembering how much fun it had been sitting on that porch, telling the ocean's story. Eventually, I decided that if I couldn't find the right book, I'd just have to write something myself.

A Road Map

How the Ocean Works is an ambitious (even audacious) title. It has been a challenge to live up to it, and there is no guarantee that I have succeeded. But in the attempt, I have taken an approach suggested to me by Dick Barber of Duke University, using as a central theme the fact that the thermocline separates the ocean into two parts: a well-lit, warm, and nutrient-poor surface layer and a dark, cold, and nutrient-rich deep layer. This theme debuts in chapter 6, and the biological and physical consequences of the two-layered ocean are developed in chapters 7 to 9. Appreciating the nuances of the two-layered ocean requires some background, however. Chapters 2 to 5 provide the reader with necessary facts concerning the shape and size of ocean basins, the physical properties of seawater, and the relevant characteristics of photosynthesis and consumption, marine plants and marine animals.

This core of the text (chapters 2 through 9) is placed in perspective by three surrounding chapters. Chapter 1 provides a brief history of humankind's interaction with earth's oceans. Chapters 10 and 11 put our understanding of the ocean to work, first to explain the anomalous high-nutrient, low-chlorophyll areas of the sea and their potential role in global climate change (chapter 10), and lastly to examine the evolving problem of extractive fisheries (chapter 11).

In telling the ocean's story, I have been selective in the facts and concepts presented. In some cases, I have left out vast areas of current knowledge often covered in introductory texts. For example, I deal primarily with pelagic organisms—the plants and animals that swim or float in the water column—largely ignoring benthic organisms such as corals, sea grasses, and coastal seaweeds. In other cases, I include more detail than is traditional for introductory texts. For instance, a whole chapter is devoted to explaining the Coriolis effect and geostrophic flow. These nonintuitive concepts are integral to understanding the global patterns of winds and currents, and therefore to understanding how the ocean works. But the abbreviated explanations given in most introductory texts are, at best, incomplete and likely to confuse anyone who tries to apply them. I felt compelled to provide a more thorough discussion. Other details that are too interesting to leave out, but too peripheral to include in the flow of the story—such as how long it would take to melt the Greenland ice sheet, how to measure great circle distances, and the physics behind convection—are relegated to footnotes and appendices.

After each chapter, I provide a list of articles and books to which readers may turn for further instruction. Again, I have been selective. These sources are the articles and books I have found most interesting and informative, but they are only the next step toward a full understanding of the ocean. The bibliographies contained in these sources provide access to the primary literature.

Acknowledgments

I owe a great debt to Dick Barber. Not only did he suggest the central theme of this text, but he also provided a basic lesson in telling the story. When I was an undergraduate at Duke University, I took a course in biological oceanography from Dick. As an exercise, he had the class read three papers, each attempting to model temporal fluctuations in ocean primary productivity. One model had three variables and explained about 80% of the variation seen in nature. The second paper had seven or eight variables and explained 90% of the pattern of fluctuation. The third paper had fifteen variables and explained a whopping 95% of what happens in the ocean. Dick then asked us which paper represented the best science. We all picked paper number 3, of course. How could you argue with a model that accounted for 95% of reality? But Dick was incensed. Clearly the three-variable model was the most valuable! Those three variables captured the essence of what was happening in the real world, and the twelve extra variables of our favorite model were just window dressing. I have tried to apply that lesson to the selection of topics in this text. If I have succeeded in streamlining the ocean's story to its essentials, it is largely to Dick's credit. If I have failed, the fault is mine for not having absorbed his message completely.

A host of other people contributed to the development of this story by providing pertinent facts and much-needed feedback: Michael Boller, Caren Braby, Brandon Cortez, Rob Dunbar, Pat Harr, Nick Holland, Luke Hunt, George Leonard, Patrick Martone, Luke Miller, Michael O'Donnell, Danna Shulman, George Somero, Freya Sommer, Dale Stokes, Emma Timmins-Schiffman, and Sam Umry. Early drafts of the text were imposed on students enrolled in Principles of Oceanic Biology at Stanford's Hopkins Marine Station, and I thank them for their forbearance and constructive comments. Katie Mach read the entire manuscript several times, correcting my grammar and pinpointing flaws.

It has been a pleasure to work with Princeton University Press on this project. Robert Kirk saw the value of a different approach to introducing oceanography, and he put the Press's professionals at my disposal: Terri O'Prey, who deftly shepherded the manuscript through production; Dimitri Karetnikov, who, with the help of Erin Suydam, Shane Kelly, Sandy Rivkin, and Anne Karetnikov, orchestrated the construction of figures; and Jodi Beder, who polished the prose and vetted the logic. I thank them all.

And, as always, I thank my family—Sue, Katie, and Jim—for their unwavering support of a husband and father whose mind was all too often off at sea.

CHAPTER 1

Discovering the Oceans

Throughout history, men and women have been drawn to the sea. In ancient times, people felt the same desire you and I feel today, the urge to stand and gaze upon the ocean. Then, as now, the ocean meant different things to different people. For the hungry, the sea was a source of abundant food: fish and lobsters, seals and seaweeds, whales and shrimp. For the audacious, the ocean was a route to faraway lands, an avenue of commerce and conquest. For the bereaved, the ocean epitomized grief: the oblivion into which their loved ones sailed, never to return, or the source of waves that consumed their villages. For the lucky, the sea was a source of pleasure and recreation.

These historical perspectives persist, but if you go down to the shore today and stare out to sea, your perspective is likely tempered by a modern point of view. With our recently acquired ability to travel into space, we now see the earth and its oceans as a whole (figure 1.1). Using satellite cameras we can locate storms and guide ships out of harm's way. We can count the phytoplankton that fuel the fisheries and direct fishermen to fertile grounds. Our sensors detect climatic anomalies as they begin, allowing us to predict their consequences. These are exciting times for humankind's interactions with the sea.

But this new perspective has two dangers. First, our capacity to see the entire earth can foster a sense of arrogance. It is easy to forget that the ability to observe is only the first step toward the ability to understand and control. As we learn how the ocean works, we must be careful to note the limits of our knowledge. Second, the grand view from space has the tendency to diminish our sense of personal contact. Awe-inspiring as it is, figure 1.1 cannot convey the infinite expanse of the ocean at night when viewed from the deck of a small ship, the tang of salt on an ocean breeze, the crash of a breaking wave, or the shiver of water against your skin. To arrive eventually at a full appreciation of earth's seas, we first need to anchor our perspective in human experience. To that end, we retrace the steps of our ancestors and explore the arduous path by which human society discovered the oceans. In this chapter, we have time only for an outline of the full journey—a mad dash through history. So, brace yourself as we begin with legends.

Figure 1.1. Earth from space. A photograph of the western hemisphere from the Visible Earth project at NASA (visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_detail.php?id=2429).

Ancient Myths

In many cultures, myths of the sea tell mostly of destruction. From the islands of the Pacific to the coasts of Central America, India, and the Middle East, when the ancient gods were displeased with men or women, they often chose the ocean rather than fire or wind as the instrument of their wrath. In the Bible, for instance, forty days and forty nights of rain caused the sea to rise and wipe the earth clean, sparing only Noah and those on his ark. Similar legends of earth-cleansing floods are common among civilizations in the Middle East. The Babylonians, for example, had a flood myth similar to that of the Bible, with a man named Utnapishtim playing the role of Noah. Likewise, the Sumerians had King Ziusudra.

Figure 1.2. The Bosporus Strait, in what is now Turkey, separates the Black Sea from the Mediterranean Sea. Before the strait opened, the Black Sea was a freshwater lake.

Given this ubiquitous mythical reference to floods, some historians have suggested that there are historical bases for these tales. For example, legends of a great flood among coastal Indians of the Pacific Northwest may refer to tsunamis (tidal waves) caused by earthquakes, and the flood myths of Pacific islanders may describe waves resulting from volcanic eruptions.

A potential, although controversial, source of the Middle Eastern flood legends concerns the Black Sea. Today, the Black Sea is connected to the Mediterranean Sea by the Bosporus Strait, a narrow passage adjacent to Istanbul (figure 1.2). However, about ten thousand years ago at the end of the last Ice Age, a sill (essentially an earthen dam) closed the Bosporus, and the Black Sea was a freshwater lake. As the glaciers receded and earth's climate warmed, the level of the Black Sea dropped due to evaporation, while the level of the Mediterranean rose as the world's oceans absorbed the water from melting ice. Eventually, the Mediterranean broke through the sill separating it from the Black Sea, and the consequent flooding would have been catastrophic to the villages along the Black Sea's coast—an event worthy of a legend.

Regardless of their precise origin, the flood myths convey the mystery and fear that tinged ancient encounters with the sea.

Commerce and Expansion

For all its destructive potential, the ocean has always tempted humans to risk its dangers in search of food and rapid transport. Boats built of wood and reeds traveled the waters of the Nile River in Egypt as long ago as 4000 BC, and many ancient civilizations of the Middle East used boats for fishing and coastal commerce. In particular, the Phoenicians were adventuresome merchants and adept sailors. In the first and second millennium BC, they developed a complex web of trade routes around the Mediterranean, and sailed as far north as the British Isles, trading for tin to use in making bronze. Similarly, in the Far East, coastal commerce using sampans and junks flourished in China. In the Arctic, the Inuit developed sea-going kayaks and umiaks, capable vessels from which they could hunt walrus and whales.¹ The indigenous people of Chile, Peru, and Ecuador used small reed boats and large rafts for fishing and commerce.

In fact, some anthropologists suggest that the expansion of humans into North and South America occurred most rapidly not by land, but rather by sea. Experts agree that humans spread from Asia into North America after the last Ice Age, and have long assumed that humans spread throughout North America before subsequently expanding to Central and South America. It has recently been proposed, however, that the leading edge of this expansion was not through the middle of the continent, but rather along its western shore as groups used small boats to travel south. For example, a village at Monte Verde on the coast of Chile probably dates back to at least 15,000 BC, a time when humans were only beginning to populate central North America. Clearly, from very early times, our fear of the ocean has competed with—and often lost to—our urge to go exploring in boats.

Perhaps the best example of this wanderlust is the spread of humanity to islands in the Pacific. Starting in the Philippines about five thousand years ago, modern humans rapidly expanded their range in the open expanse of the Pacific Ocean. By 1600 BC they had reached New Guinea and the nearby Bismarck Archipelago. Forced onward by population growth, Polynesians next sailed to Samoa around 1200 BC, and by 500 AD, they had traveled all the way to Hawai'i and Easter Island (figure 1.3).

It is clear that this expansion was not the accidental result of a few fisher folk being blown offshore and ending up on other islands. Hawai'i, for example, was settled by sailors traveling from the Marquesas across 3700 kilometers (2300 miles) of open ocean. That monumental leap required ocean-going outrigger canoes large enough to carry not only people but also the plants and animals of their culture. And finding Hawai'i required exceptional working knowledge of navigation and the sea. Each step in the Polynesian expansion involved skill, planning, and a group effort.

Even for the Polynesians, however, there were limitations. They sailed from one island to another within a circumscribed area of the Pacific, but this expansion was constrained by the availability of uninhabited islands. As well planned and skillfully executed as they were, Polynesian expeditions were incapable of invading previously occupied mainland territory. For instance, if prehistoric Polynesians reached South America—the next step east from Easter Island—their numbers were far too small to gain a foothold among the indigenous people who had arrived millennia before. Thus, despite their sailing prowess, the Polynesians could not move beyond the Pacific, and as a result, they had no knowledge of the entirety of the world ocean.

Figure 1.3. Islands of the Pacific, the realm into which the Polynesians expanded. Monte Verde, on the coast of Chile—site of a village dating back nearly 15,000 years—is 3600 kilometers southeast of Easter Island.

The course of Polynesian exploration in the Pacific was mirrored by that of the Vikings in the northern Atlantic. In the first few centuries AD, the climate in Scandinavia was unusually warm, allowing crops to flourish and populations to grow. As the countryside filled up, Norwegians and Danes looked for opportunities elsewhere. Utilizing their superior shipbuilding technology, the Vikings sent raiding parties eastward along the rivers of Russia and southward along the coasts of Europe, at times ranging as far as Constantinople (now Istanbul). These raids significantly impacted European history. For example, William the Conqueror defeated the English at the Battle of Hastings in 1066—the sole successful invasion of the British Isles—in large part because the English troops were exhausted from doing battle a month before with Viking invaders.²

In addition to raiding established societies, the Vikings undertook an islandhopping expansion westward into uninhabited territory (figure 1.4), first to the Orkney, Shetland, and Faeroe Islands (around 800 AD), then to Iceland (by 874 AD) and southern Greenland (in about 980 AD). Ships plying the trade routes between Iceland and Greenland were occasionally blown off course, and one of these (captained by Bjarni Herjolfsson in 986 AD) sighted a forested coast to the west of Greenland. Spurred on by the lure of abundant timber, which had become scarce in Greenland, Leif Ericsson bought Herjolfsson's boat and formed an expedition to explore this new land. Ericsson and his crews, accompanied by women and livestock, traveled along the coast of Baffin Island and Labrador and built a small outpost at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland. However, they skirmished with the local Indians, and in light of the prospect of continued conflict, the Vikings abandoned their attempt to colonize the New World.

Figure 1.4. The realm of the Vikings.

Like the Polynesians, the Vikings explored the ocean not out of a thirst for knowledge, but rather in response to the demands of population growth and commerce. And, like the Polynesians, they were stymied in their expansion by the overwhelming size of indigenous populations. Viking travels were thereby limited, and they never developed an understanding of the scope of the world ocean.

In summary, as a result of its expanding population, by 1000 AD, humankind had dipped its toes into each of earth's seas. Many cultures used coastal waters for fishing and commerce, and the Polynesians and Vikings traveled a few open-ocean routes. But our knowledge of the sea was piecemeal: we hadn't truly discovered the ocean. That achievement resulted from a different journey, one that began with the Greeks.

Science and the Greeks

Growth of Greek civilization marked the beginning of abstract scientific thought. Whereas the Chinese, Egyptians, and Babylonians were masters of technology and astronomy, the Greeks were masters of concept. This distinction is evident in the way the different civilizations viewed the world. Early Chinese maps, for instance, give detailed information regarding the disposition of armies and the location of rivers and cities in the Middle Kingdom, but they show nothing beyond China's boundaries. In contrast, by 2500 years ago, the Greeks were actively speculating on the shape of the entire earth.

In fact, their speculations were highly logical and specific. For example, Aristotle (384-322 BC), the famous Greek scientist and philosopher, deduced that earth was a sphere, an assumption he based on four observations. First, there was the appearance of ships as they sailed into the distance. If the earth were flat, a ship sailing toward the horizon would appear smaller and smaller until it vanished from view. Instead, ships descended into the horizon, their hulls disappearing first, then their masts, suggesting that the surface of the water (and thus, of the earth) was curved.

The same logic applies from the perspective of the ship: as it travels away from shore, the coastline descends into the horizon. This perspective led Aristotle to note that stars appear and disappear on the horizon as one travels north or south, further evidence of earth's spherical shape.

Lunar eclipses provided a third clue. It was apparent from simple observations that the moon is a sphere. For instance, as the moon goes through its phases, the line separating dark from light changes shape as it travels across the moon's face. It is curved when the moon is a crescent, and straight when the moon is half full: what one would expect for a sphere lit from different angles. Shadows similarly reveal the shape of the earth. During a lunar eclipse, the shadow of the earth falling on the moon is always curved, as it should be if earth is a sphere.

And finally, there was the matter of aesthetics. To Greek mathematicians, the sphere was the perfect shape, the only object uniform about its center. The sun was clearly spherical, as was the moon. Why should the earth be any less perfect?

Acceptance of the earth as a sphere immediately led Greek scientists to two important questions: how big is the sphere, and where on its surface is Greece? In an extraordinary example of cultural genius, they devised answers to both.

In the fourth century BC, Alexander the Great (a pupil of Aristotle's) conquered much of the known world, sending many of the treasures he obtained to his museum in Alexandria, near the mouth of the Nile. After Alexander's death, the museum was supported by the royal rulers of Egypt and continued to acquire and catalog the fruits of civilization. To that end, it established a think tank (Euclid and Archimedes worked there, among others) and a vast library. The second Librarian of Alexandria, a man named Eratosthenes (ca. 276–196 BC), took it upon himself not only to accumulate the written knowledge of the world (as any good librarian would), but also to synthesize that knowledge. One of the things he contemplated was the size of the earth.

It came to Eratosthenes’ attention that each year a notable event occurred in the city of Syene, due south of Alexandria. At noon on the summer solstice—the day of the year when the sun is highest in the sky—sunlight shone directly down into the wells at Syene, indicating that the sun was precisely overhead. Eratosthenes found this curious. In Alexandria there were vertical stone pillars called gnomons. If the sun were also directly overhead in Alexandria, the gnomons would not cast a shadow, but at noon on the summer solstice, shadows persisted. Clearly the angle at which sunlight approached the ground differed between Alexandria and Syene.

Enter the notion of a spherical earth (figure 1.5). Eratosthenes deduced that the difference in the angle of sunlight resulted from the different locations of Alexandria and Syene. At noon on the summer solstice, Syene (near the present-day city of Aswan) was at a point on earth directly under the sun, whereas Alexandria, north of Syene, was at a point on earth's curve where a vertical gnomon pointed off at an angle. Eratosthenes’ genius was to use this realization to measure the size of the earth.

Figure 1.5. Eratosthenes’ scheme for calculating the size of the earth. Angles A and B are equal.

To do so, he needed two measurements. First, he had to measure the angle between Alexandria and Syene (angle A in figure 1.5). This was easily done. Noting that angle A equals angle B, Eratosthenes realized he could use the shadow cast by a gnomon to measure the angle between Alexandria and Syene. At noon on the solstice, he wandered over to the nearest gnomon, measured its height and the length of its shadow, and used geometry to calculate first angle B, and then angle A. It turned out to be 7.12°, almost exactly 1/50 of an entire circle. This angle in turn meant that the distance from Syene to Alexandria was 1/50 the entire distance around the earth. Thus, if Eratosthenes could measure the distance from Syene to Alexandria, he could measure the earth's circumference.

Surprisingly, Eratosthenes didn't even need to leave home to measure the distance from Syene to Alexandria. As Librarian, he was privy to all sorts of information, including the fact that caravans of camels typically required 50 days to travel from Syene to Alexandria. It was common knowledge in those times that camels can travel 100 stadia per day, so he calculated that the distance from Syene to Alexandria is approximately 50 × 100 = 5000 stadia.

Now, a stadium is a measure of length used by the Greeks—a common foot race was one stadium in length, which set the size of a standard running track and eventually led to the current use of the term stadium. Current archeological estimates suggest that one stadium is roughly 0.185 kilometers. Thus, in present-day units, Eratosthenes calculated that the distance from Syene to Alexandria was 925 kilometers. Multiplying by 50, he then estimated that the earth's circumference was approximately 46,250 kilometers.

This calculation is extraordinary. The current estimate of earth's circumference is 40,008 kilometers, only about 13% smaller than the distance Eratosthenes calculated 2300 years ago. One Greek, scratching his head in an ancient library, collecting a few facts from camel drivers and gnomons and making a simple calculation, measured the earth with astounding precision.

The Greeks’ understanding of the earth did not stop there. In Eratosthenes’ time, Greeks used a primitive version of latitude and longitude to locate points on earth's surface. In the beginning, the basis for this coordinate system was a line drawn east to west through the island of Rhodes (just south of Greece), essentially a line placed across the middle of the Greek empire. Parallel lines could then be drawn to the north and south, each expressing a line of more-orless constant climate. These parallels—called climata or klimata—served as the basis for present-day lines of latitude.

Originally, the climata were not equally spaced; as indices of climate, unequally spaced lines sufficed. But as civilization became more complex and more cities needed to be located on maps, the informal system of climata became unworkable, and a new, more uniform system gradually evolved. Hipparchus (ca. 190-120 BC) placed the climata at uniform distances and added lines running north-south to form a grid. To standardize the angular distances between points on earth, he borrowed a tradition from Babylonian astronomers and divided the circle into 360 degrees. Thus, Hipparchus invented the modern coordinate system of geography, complete with units, and of equal importance, his system was popularized by the Greek author, Claudius Ptolemy (ca. 90–168 AD).

Ptolemy excelled not at creating new knowledge, but rather at sorting and chronicling existing knowledge, which he did superbly. In two books, the Almagest (The Greatest) and Geography, he recorded his best estimate of all knowledge of mathematics, science, and geography, and introduced a few innovations, such as dividing each degree of latitude or longitude into 60 minutes, and each minute, in turn, into 60 seconds. As their titles suggest, Ptolemy's books were a tour de force, and they became the standard references of his day.

Although Ptolemy successfully recorded much of the Greeks’ knowledge, he was not infallible, and one of his mistakes had historical consequences. For reasons that are unclear, Ptolemy did not accept Eratosthenes’ estimate for the size of the earth and instead chose a value calculated by another Greek scientist, Poseidonius. Unfortunately, Poseidonius had proposed that the circumference of the earth was 30,000 kilometers, 25% smaller than the actual value. By accepting Poseidonius's figure, Ptolemy assumed the earth was considerably smaller than it actually is.

Compounding this mistake, Ptolemy also thought that Asia extended to the east substantially farther than it really does. With an undersized earth and an oversized Asia, Ptolemy's globe had no room for features such as North and South America or a large Pacific Ocean. In fact, by Ptolemy's estimate, Asia extended so far east that it came close to wrapping around the earth and touching Europe. The mistaken idea that the east coast of Asia was but a short distance west of Europe eventually led to Christopher Columbus's voyage to the New World, but that lucky miscalculation was far in the future. In the interim, the Dark Ages descended on Europe.

The Dark Ages

The notion of a spherical earth survived the Roman absorption of Greek culture, but it was nearly lost to Western civilization with the fall of the Roman Empire. In 391, for instance, Christian mobs overran the library at Alexandria and burned its invaluable contents. Copies of a few books, Ptolemy's Almagest and Geography among them, had been translated into Arabic and disseminated, and thereby survived, but it would be nearly a thousand years before the Greeks’ insights resurfaced in the West.

During the Middle Ages, knowledge of the earth in Western civilization was governed more by Christian doctrine than by scientific inquiry. Maps were drawn not as an expression of reality, but rather to match the dictates of the Bible. For example, the earth was deemed flat, with Jerusalem at its center. The Mediterranean Sea derived its name from its assumed location: the middle of the earth. Surrounding the known lands of the earth was a mysterious ocean, unknown and—to a medieval culture closed in on itself—largely unknowable. Thus, for nearly 700 years after the sacking of Alexandria, knowledge of the ocean stagnated.

The Mongol Empire and the Role of Commerce

Although Christianity was largely responsible for the suppression of science in the Middle Ages, it also facilitated events that eventually brought the science of geography back to life. Beginning in 1096 AD with the First Crusade, Christian European society periodically waged war on the Muslim Middle East. This and subsequent crusades primarily sought recapture of the Holy Land for Christianity, but ancillary consequences abounded. For example, in traveling to and from the Holy Land and in governing the areas they conquered, the crusaders came into contact with Middle Eastern culture. As so often happens, the culture of the conquerors had less impact on the culture of the conquered than vice versa. Christian soldiers acquired a taste for intriguing riches available in the region—silk cloth, perfumes, and exotic spices—and soon active trade passed between the two cultures. Silks and spices from Asia arrived overland in the Middle East, where local traders acted as middlemen, selling to the highest bidders from the West.

This commerce had two major effects. First, the desire for silks, perfumes, and spices in Western culture gradually spiraled into an addiction. In an ancient analogy to the current commerce in oil, aspects of European society became dependent on commercial ties to the Middle East. Second, commerce opened Western eyes to the existence of Asian cultures. Although